Hello my fellow TAYers, and welcome to Patch Notes, a new feature wherein I go through the myriad amount of MMO and MOBA news sites, find stories I think you will like and share them in a weekly roundup. Yes you could go out and do this own your own, but why, when I am happy to do it for you?

It was announced that Final Fantasy XIV had hit five million users worldwide on Monday August 24th. The user base stretches across North America, Europe Chine and Japan. Square Enix made the announcement through a press release.

LOS ANGELES (Aug. 21, 2015) – In just under two years, Square Enix Inc., today announced that the community of FINAL FANTASY® XIV now exceeds 5 million registered accounts globally across North America, Japan, Europe, and China—not including those from free trial.

Spurred on by a vibrant community of players, as well as a consistent schedule of content updates, FINAL FANTASY XIV continues to deliver on the promise of bringing the hallmarks of the FINAL FANTASY experience to an online world. Players can enjoy the option of joining the adventure together on multiple platforms from the PC to the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, the PlayStation®Vita handheld entertainment system (with Remote Play), and the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system.

The CEO of the MMO Firm Funcom Rui Casais tells players in an interview with gamesinsutry.biz that “our live games will continue running either by us or someone else as they are generating profit.”

This isn’t the first crisis at Funcom in recent years - why were revenue predictions for Minifigures Online so far out and why was there no contingency plan in place?

“There are most likely many factors as to why LEGO Minifigures Online did not meet the forecasted expectations. That could include factors such as competition with other LEGO games tied to stronger and more popular IPs (such as Star Wars, The Hobbit, Marvel etc.), challenges related to the purchasing ability among the target audience and the fact that this was a pure digital title, not to mention the fact that the game had already been available in a free-to-play form the year before (where it then consumed a fair share of interested players). It was also our first mobile launch, and we most likely underestimated the work and overestimated the total revenue potential. When the project started, it was not meant to go mobile, but the changing market led us to switch from initially planning to be browser-based to going mobile.”

The official Heroes Of The Storm YouTube Channel has a video going over the new Hero, Kharazim the monk.

In other Blizzard news, the 2.3.0 patch for Diablo 3 was released today. The patch includes a new map, The ruins Of Seccheron. This new map is the only place to obtain Kanai’s Cube. , a spiritual successor to D2’ss Horadric Cude. This item will allow for further item customization and new ways to extract and forge legendaries.

The official Diablo YouTube channel has a video going over what is new for 2.3.0

Riot Games Lead Game Designer of Social Systems Jeffery Lin said that peoples who have received certain types of disciplinary measures will not get their ranked rewards.

“We are still working on the details for the 2015 Season, but the current plan is that players who have been Chat Restricted, Ranked Restricted or Game Banned during the 2015 Season will not receive Season Rewards in Ranked.”

“Players that have reformed and DO NOT HAVE Chat or Ranked Restrictions by Season end will still get Ranked Rewards. However,players that have been game banned for 7-14 days for excessive toxicity at any point during the 2015 Season will not get rewards.”

With the coming New Dawn update, Star Trek Online Executive Produer Steve Ricossa sat down with Massivelop.com to discuss the transition from the Delta Rising expansion, the end of the Iconian War and what will replace the exploration system.

Delta Rising was the source of a lot of player criticisms, especially over the handling of the Tier 5/Tier 6 ship upgrades and acquisitions. What lessons have the dev team taken away from that expansion to improve the future of the game?

It’s always interesting to go back and review the feedback we’ve gotten with each release. While there certainly was some vocal criticism, we’ve seen the players at large enjoy it once they got to experience it for themselves. We always review player feedback on anything we plan to release or have already released and take that criticism into account for current or future changes. We learn lessons from every season and expansion, and we put those lessons to use while planning for the future of our game. One of the most important lessons we’ve learned is to increase our communication and interactions with our fantastic players.

According to a report from Polygon, Cloud Imperium, the company behind the development of Star Citizen has announced that they have refunded pledges from 1,269 backers. While according to CEO Chris Roberts the company is “under no legal obligation” to provide refunds, he did have this to say on the matter.

“If there are cases where people are really upset, or facing personal hardships, on a case by case basis we take a look and we refund,” Roberts explained.

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According to Star Citizen’s website there are current over 965,000 backers, with $87.5 million in pledges. Click below for the full story from Polygon.

ArenaNet President Mike O’Brien and Game Director Colin Johanson will be making an announcement to unveil a major feature coming in Guild Wars 2 : Heart Of Thorns as well as several announcements with regard to the core game. The press and fan panel will be during Pax Prime in Seattle Washington. It will be held on Saturday August 29th at 10:30 AM PST /1:30 PM est. Fans can tune into the Guild Wars 2 Twitch Channel to watch the event live.

The biggest item in that list is the Draenor Pathfinder Account-Wide achivement which will enable players to fly in Draenor. Wowheadhas a video which goes over the process for obtaining the achivement.

If you are interested in the next X-Pac, Legion, Suzie Ford at MMORPG.com did a preview of the features in the upcoming expansion. Here is the official Blizzard site if you want to see what Blizz has in store for the new X-Pac

Lastly, if you are interested in buying Virtual Tickets for BlizzCon, they are now available for sale. Tickets for the two day event are $39.99. The event will be in Anaheim, California November 6th and 7th. Fore more details check out the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket FAQ.

Well i think that’s enough news for this week. I’m sure I missed a lot. If people like this idea i’ll be keeping up with new developments throughout the week to make sure I don’t miss something the community might be interested in. Please leave your feedback in the comments section. I’ll see you guys next week, with another edition of Patch Notes.